


To the Stars Who Listen

by illyriantremors



Series: ACOMAF Rhys POV Standalone Chapters [4]
Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: F/M, Rhys POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-03
Updated: 2016-08-03
Packaged: 2018-07-29 01:21:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7664773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illyriantremors/pseuds/illyriantremors
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rhys POV of when Feyre smiles at Tarquin in the Summer Court and their subsequent encounter later in the day in Feyre's bedroom. Taken from Chapter 34 of ACOMAF.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To the Stars Who Listen

**Author's Note:**

> Update as of 4/19/17: This fic has been updated! I have gone back to the beginning of ACOMAF and started the entire book from Rhys's POV. You can find this specific chapter new and updated _[HERE](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10515438/chapters/23208348)_. :)

She wasn’t at breakfast.

I took my time working through the various jams and breads that had been set out, listening to Cresseida continue the stories she had left off on last night. I liked Cresseida well enough, but I was too bored with her voice to care and too distracted by Feyre’s absence to really deign a reply.

But Feyre never appeared. Nor at lunch, nor any other activity I pushed through in between.

So I was forced to wait for her until her scheduled appointment with Tarquin finally arrived. I didn’t like that he was there or anyone else. This was an important moment and I would have preferred to speak with Feyre and counsel her about her day’s work without an audience.

When I entered the main hall - Tarquin, Cresseida, Varian, and Amren at my side - she was already there waiting. Styled in an endearing shade of seafoam green in a dress that twirled around her, Feyre looked bright. Too bright, I noted. She was beautiful as she always was, but then Tarquin stepped before her in a tunic of nearly identical styling and I saw the sunlight bounce between them.

A heavy weight fell into the pit of my stomach, a little lump of teeth and claws and a feeling much too sharp to be simple annoyance.

“You’re looking well today,” Tarquin said with a chipper voice. The voice Feyre said she could love, I unnecessarily reminded myself.

Feyre finally made to turn her head, but her eyes found Amren. Not mine. “I hope I’m not interrupting,” she said.

“We were finishing up a rather lively debate about armadas and who might be in charge of a unified front,” Amren said with her usual cool. “Did you know that before they became so big and powerful, Tarquin and Varian led Nostrus’s fleet?”

Thanks, Amren. Because Feyre needed yet another reason to be enamored of the High Lord. As if on queue, Feyre looked delighted with this new piece of information.

“You didn’t mention you were a sailor,” she said. Tarquin had the decency to looked embarrassed.

“I had planned to tell you during our tour. Shall we?” He offered his arm and my stomach flipped, turning the beast inside of it upside down with rage. I shouldn’t have felt so incensed. Mate or not, Feyre was free to do as she pleased, but she hadn’t even looked at me and now she was taking his arm and leaving without sparing me a second thought.

“See you later,” she said, throwing her words carelessly over her shoulder as if she knew it would wound me. And wound me it did. The beast burst from my stomach and clawed viciously at Feyre’s mind, to beg her to at least be careful, but I was met with a wall of steel that locked me straight out.

And she knew it. I knew she could feel me at the edges of her mind trying to get in. My heart skipped a beat as Feyre turned her head and I thought she was going to acknowledge me, but she stopped when her eyes reached Tarquin and she smiled.

Not for me. But for him.

The beast inside me didn’t back off so much as die completely.

The second I could free myself of our Summer Court hosts, I burst inside Feyre’s room to wait for her. Amren, with her careless daring, had sensed my discomfort and attempted to convince me I should tell Feyre about the bond then and there. “Get it over with,” she said. “You’ll feel better.” As if revealing the deepest, most intimate parts of myself were something to throw about with Feyre as if it were no more than ripping off a bandage.

“You don’t just get it over with with a mating bond, Amren,” I’d said, before marching into Feyre’s room and snapping the door shut.

I went mad with waiting for her. They took their time and each tick of the time passing by was another chance for Tarquin to enthrall Feyre and bring her under his spell. I didn’t even remember the Book she was supposed to be tracking. All I could think about was the two of them finding themselves wrapped up together in the most intimate positions.

Just as I thought I might become sick with the thought of Tarquin’s hands on Feyre’s skin, I scented her approach. I threw myself on her bed, my arms propped casually behind my head as if I had belonged here all along. Let her see how she liked being toyed with.

“What do you want?” Feyre snapped, allowing the door to slam shut behind her. I smiled, glad of her immediate annoyance.

“Flirting with Tarquin did you no good, I take it?”

A box landed on the bed next to me. “You tell me.”

“This isn’t the Book,” I said, looking at the necklace. It was, of course, stunning.

“No, but it’s a beautiful gift.”

All at once, the restless creature - the angry one - I thought had died at Feyre’s smile roared to life within me once more.

“You want me to buy you jewelry, Feyre, then say the word. Though given your wardrobe, I thought you were aware that it was all bought for you.” I didn’t even care that my anger was ripping through the edges of my voice. For her part, Feyre sounded tired through her annoyance with me.

“Tarquin is a good male - a good High Lord. You should just ask him for the damned Book.”

I snapped the box shut, nearly shattering it from the force of my hands in the process. “So he plies you with jewels and pours honey in your ear, and now you feel bad?”

“He wants your alliance - desperately. He wants to trust you, rely on you.”

“Well, Cresseida is under the impression that her cousin is rather ambitious, so I’d be careful to read between his words.”

A look flashed in Feyre’s eyes, so fast I almost missed it. But it spelled out her own sort of rage curled within in her chest. The creature within me rallied at it in reply.

“Oh?” Feyre snapped. “Did she tell you that before, during, or after you took her to bed?”

So that was it then. She didn’t like me playing with Cresseida, but surely she saw it for the act it was? Had our time Under the Mountain and in Velaris shown her nothing if not that much? What I wouldn’t do to protect my court?

I rose from the bed slowly trying miserably to appear collected. “Is that why you wouldn’t look at me? Because you think I fucked her for information?”

“Information or your own pleasure, I don’t care.”

The beast inside me writhed with delight. She couldn’t possibly be jealous over me. Feyre hated me, or at least, she had before. But I didn’t think - I never thought she could feel… about me.

I glided up to her, barely any space left between us. “Jealous, Feyre?” I purred, my eyes gleaming against her as she stared me down.

“If I’m jealous,” she said, “then you’re jealous about Tarquin and his honey pouring.”

I almost erupted on the spot with every ounce of night and darkness available to me, but my words still stung with intensity as I threw them at her. I was no longer Amarantha’s little pet, using sex to earn me favors and information, though I would do it in a heartbeat again if it was the only means left to save my home.

And I would make her understand that. Reject me, flirt with me, ignore me - whatever she chose, I didn’t care. So long as she knew the truth.

“Do you think I particularly like having to flirt with a lonely female to get information about her court, her High Lord?” I demanded. “Do you think I feel good about myself, doing that? Do you think I enjoy doing it just so you have the space to ply Tarquin with your smiles and pretty eyes, so we can get the Book and go home?”

“You seemed to enjoy yourself plenty last night.”

“I didn’t take her to bed,” I snarled. I couldn’t believe we were having this conversation. Was this how Cassian had felt sparring with Nesta? “She wanted to, but I didn’t so much as kiss her. I took her out for a drink in the city, let her talk about her life, her pressures, and brought her back to her room, and went no farther than the door.”

The words spilled out my mouth, my breathing uneven as I became unhinged, Feyre watching me with widening eyes and dawning comprehension. “I waited for you at breakfast, but you slept in. Or avoided me, apparently. And I tried to catch your eye this afternoon, but you were so good as shutting me out completely.”

Feyre grew very still, surveying me, taking in my new wildness she wasn’t used to seeing from me. “Is that what got under your skin? That I shut you out, or that it was so easy for Tarquin to get in?” she asked, hesitant.

Yes.

No.

All of it.

Everything.

You.

“What go under my skin is that you smiled for him,” I said, choking on the words. The creature inside me went limp. I wanted her. I wanted her so badly and I couldn’t have her. Jealous or not, she wouldn’t have me. I had fought tooth and nail for that smile for months and she had given it to Tarquin in less than 48 hours. 

“You are jealous,” she said with a small voice.

Of course I am, Feyre. I’m your mate.

I slumped and made for the bar table holding in the corner of Feyre’s room, throwing back a drink as wings threatened to form at my back. My control over my body felt tenuous at best, a feeling that unsettled me, I was so depleted.

“I heard what you told him,” I said. “That you thought it would be easy to fall in love with him. You meant it, too.”

“So?” Feyre asked and my mind was filled with nothing but that smile she had given the High Lord of the Summer Court. It would burn my mind to pieces for centuries to come.

“I was jealous - of that,” I explained. “That I’m not… that sort of person. For anyone. The Summer Court has always been neutral; they only showed backbone during those years Under the Mountain. I spared Tarquin’s life because I’d heard how he wanted to even out the playing field between High Fae and less faeries. I’ve been trying to do that for years. Unsuccessfully, but… I spared him for that alone. And Tarquin, with his neutral court… he will never have to worry about someone walking away because the threat against their life, their children’s lives, will always be there. So, yes, I was jealous of him - because it will always be easy for him. And he will never know what it is to look up at the night sky and wish.”

There was a silence and when Feyre came to stand next to me, my heart in her hands, I could see a redness gathering on the rims of her eyes. She didn’t look at me and the creature in me almost threw itself back in despair instead of anger, thinking that I had upset her again somehow. But Feyre simply poured herself a drink and refilled my own before raising her eyes to finally meet me. Her gaze was deep and thoughtful, boring into me with assurances and I think something like forgiveness.

“To the people who look at the stars and wish, Rhys,” she toasted. The creature inside me quieted with a solemn calm.

I clinked my glass with Feyre’s. “To the stars who listen - and the dreams that are answered.”

xx


End file.
